Wisecracks abounded as news of Ohio State University’s newly acquired armored military vehicle
spread from blog to blog this month.

Would university police use the 38,000-pound vehicle to quash collegiate panty raids? Lay siege
to the University of Michigan?

But peppered throughout the online riffing were bleak predictions about the rise of a
government-sponsored police state. Some brought up the May 4, 1970, shootings at Kent State.

“Four dead in Ohio?” one person wrote. “That will be small fries when campus police start their
show of force with this puppy.”

To OSU Police Chief Paul Denton, such comments were gross overstatements by armchair critics who
he guessed were unfamiliar with Columbus and Ohio State.

“People have a stereotype about what campus police are about,” he said. “We look at ourselves as
a city within a city.”

At the center of the recent debate over the need for OSU’s newest police vehicle is an issue
that has been talked about for years: the continued militarization of local law-enforcement
agencies. Experts who study the trend say more local agencies than ever routinely rely on
paramilitary tactics and military equipment, much of it the aging detritus of two decades of
war.

“We are in the midst of a historic transformation,” Peter B. Kraska, an Eastern Kentucky
University professor who studies police militarization, wrote in 2007. “Attempting to control the
crime problem by routinely conducting police special-operations raids on people’s private
residences is strong evidence that the U.S. police, and crime-control efforts in general, have
moved significantly down the militarization continuum.”

This year, the American Civil Liberties Union began assessing the spread of police
militarization and its impact on individual freedoms.

“The police and the military really have fundamentally different missions,” said Kara Dansky,
senior counsel for the ACLU’s Center for Justice.

The ACLU is collecting records from police agencies in 25 states to gauge their reliance on
federal funding, military surplus and paramilitary tactics such as those SWAT teams use. The agency
believes that militarization has come at the cost of trampled rights and a greater risk of violence
for citizens and the police.

Ohio is not part of the study, which should be completed early next year, Dansky said. Data
collected so far suggest that “we do have reason to be concerned.”

Columbus police have two armored vehicles called BearCats as well as a SWAT team and another
tactical team that specializes in raiding fortified drug houses. Chief Kim Jacobs said police must
ensure that such equipment and tactics are used wisely.

“That’s my responsibility, that’s Chief Denton’s responsibility, to make sure that we don’t
overreact to possible threats or known threats with heavy-handed policing,” she said. “You don’t
see us driving that armored vehicle on patrol. Most of the time it’s parked, but when we need it,
we need it.”

Many police agencies would rather be over-prepared than ill-equipped, she said.

The BearCats are used in barricade and hostage situations, often as safeguards for officers and
civilians.

The rise of crack cocaine sold by dealers in fortified houses fueled the need for SWAT-like
tactics, battering rams and armored vehicles, Jacobs said.

Kathleen Bailey of the Near East Side Commission supports the police but said officers sometimes
treat law-abiding residents as though they’ve done something wrong.

“I’m not naive,” she said. “I’m always chasing people with drugs and catching people stealing or
prostitutes, and if I didn’t know the (good) people who live here, what would I be thinking?”

She wishes more officers would follow the lead of her precinct’s community liaison officer,
Theresa Kalous.

“She really knows the neighborhood, knows the people,” Bailey said.

For OSU, adding the military-surplus Navistar MaxxPro MRAP, or Mine Resistant Ambush Protected
vehicle, to his fleet was a no-brainer, Denton said. The MRAP can be used to safely transport
officers and civilians during crises such as a campus shooting, to block restricted areas during
large events, even to clear fallen trees after a storm, the chief said.

“Certainly, we’re not going to run it across the Oval,” he said. “There are no weapons on this
thing. It’s simply a personnel-protection vehicle.”

The MRAP was free through a federal surplus program. The division can always get rid of it if
maintenance becomes too expensive, he said.

He believes that OSU officers have a strong relationship and good dialogue with the university
community.

“Just the fact that we have a particular piece of equipment or tactical resource, that’s not
going to change that at all,” he said.